Atlas V TDRS-L Launch Highlights

A United Launch Alliance (ULA) Atlas V rocket successfully launched NASA's Tracking and Data Relay Satellite (TDRS-L) payload from Space Launch Complex-41. This was the first of 15 ULA launches scheduled for 2014 and the 78th ULA launch for ULA in just over seven years. NASA established the TDRS project in 1973, with the first launch in 1983, to provide around-the-clock and around-the-Earth communications for the network that routes voice calls, telemetry streams and television signals from the International Space Station, as well as telemetry and science data from the Hubble Space Telescope and other orbiting spacecraft.